Liberate Your Story Podcast

Have you heard the phrase “don’t fix it if it ain’t broke!”?
I’ve been spending a lot of time watching, reading, and listening to people wrestling with their beliefs and faith systems. Some of it is quite painful to hear.
I’m in a Facebook group for exvangelicals. Exvangelicals are those who have left the Evangelical Christian faith system at some degree. The label is very broad but it can include those who have left a specific denomination or all the way to leaving a belief in deity altogether. This particular facebook group hosts over 10,000 members. That’s a lot of beautiful humans wrestling with the departure of a faith system.
Sometimes I see celebrations of freedom from their particular oppressive system.
Most of the time, though, I see humans asking questions trying to process the why and how and what’s next. Many are getting help outside this group for the abuse they suffered and PTSD. Others just want to figure out how to play their guitar and sing without connecting to ALL that came with being a worship leader. And others are trying to navigate how to keep relationships with family members after walking away from a formal church structure.
Friends, this is a real thing. Changing how you view the world and where you fit within that is a really brave thing to do.
Most of us were given a framework of how and what to believe. It started when we were infants and formed with each year of our life. But we weren’t really given a framework for unbelieving. This is a scary process that affects our identities and self-worth….just for starters!
So why do people do this?
Why change their beliefs and throw away all the security they once had? Why risk so much? Why can’t they just have faith that believing “this” will prove itself later? Why would they want to “give up”? Why would they want to “betray” their relationships? Couldn’t they just press into “prayer and reading” more? Why not be part of the change from the inside? Why do a few bad apples have to spoil the whole bunch?

The thing is, we have some very brave and intuitive people rising out of some really dark years of abuse, narcissistic leadership, misogyny, bigotry, racism, and supremacy. We have some people who have chosen to start listening beyond the pew they’ve resided in for so many years. We have humans who are speaking up to an ideology that isn’t JUST for all people. We have women who are seeing value in themselves beyond “mom, wife and women’s group leader”. We are seeing men break under the burden of power. We are seeing all genders and non-genders speaking up for personal agency and alignment.
We are seeing a revolution toward love.
These humans are calling the bluff on systematic religion and asking it to prove itself. They aren’t taking cliche answers or religious norms as a means to solve the beauty and problems of life. And they aren’t afraid of hell….some of them have been living it right in front of the pulpit.
So what do we do with this modern-day exodus? It’s not going away.
My heart breaks daily as I read the pain people have from leaving a system of belief that was once their whole life. This pain, though, isn’t actually because they left…that’s the freedom part they are experiencing. The pain is in how they were treated by their faith communities (sometimes political communities) for asking the hard questions.
You see, we are wired to connect!
From birth, our ability to grow, develop and thrive as a human is dependent not just on the food we take in, but on how we interact with other humans. Depriving a baby of human connection is critical to their success to thrive. Yes, we have an amazing ability to survive many difficult things, but surviving and thriving aren’t the same thing.
So what’s happening to those of us who are letting go of belief systems?
It’s pretty obvious that we see ourselves gravitating towards a new community. This is why we can find an online community of over 10,000 people that feel something similar to what we are feeling.
I believe that new space of connection is highly needed. I need it too! But it has to be more than just people who feel like I do. Exvangelicals didn’t get to a 10,000 group because they wanted to wallow in shared pain. They got there because someone else could finally see them and hear them as they wanted to be seen and heard. “Someone else gets me!” This is the point where we enter a new community. Or even a few new communities. But the next phase is the question of “what do I do now?”.
And this…this is where I see people get stuck and confused.
I believe that the thing that caused us to ask enough questions to land us at a decision to leave a faith (political, cultural, etc) belief system, is also the thing that can lead us to THRIVING.
We have the power to change the words we use, the vantage point we see the world from, and whose stories we tune into.
Oppressive systems of belief say:
There is one truth we don’t waiver from. All other “truths” are wrong.
You only need this “one thing” as your guide.
What you want isn’t relevant.
You are broken and can’t be trusted.
My body is bad.
Hierarchy matters.
Deprivation is spirituality.
Inside this community is good, outside is bad.
Your value is in what you believe/profess.
Behavior modification is the highest tenant of growth.
Punishment is motivation.
Exclusive vs Inclusive
Science matters to prove our point, but is irrelevant when it contradicts our doctrines or violates “our rights”.
(We can use that list for political groups, cultural or race beliefs, faith systems of ALL kinds, and even family structures.)
But you can think differently than that list. You can believe in something more life-giving and inclusive. You can own what you believe with inner alignment. And those beliefs CAN sit within a community that believes something different from you.
My heart is for liberation, justice, diversity, and authentic living.
That’s why I’m here. I want to be part of cultivating the community while providing frameworks for THRIVING.
There is a way forward for exvangelicals, expats, and ex-whatever-oppressed-you…and it’s actually a quite spiritual way forward.
Earlier I said that most of us weren’t given a framework for unbelieving. Programming doesn’t account for growth and expansion. It simply accounts for information in and compliance to that information. Unbelieving can feel like jumping off the deep end without the water in sight. You feel like you have no idea where you might land or if it's even water below you. We aren’t sure who jump with us or who will be waiting there when we land. But what if unbelieving isn’t about a big scary jump? What if it was as simple as a decision to evaluate our values in light of our beliefs and then shift them?
See we actually do this all the time, every day. Our unconscious mind is taking all the experiences we’ve had, all the millions of bits of information that have entered our mind and it's sifting, adjusting, and protecting us. We call these filters. It’s kind of like a food strainer. We filter based on our values, beliefs, memories, decisions, language, energy, time and space, and our attitudes. We take in over 2 million bits of information per second, run it through our filters, and then enters a process of deletion, distortion, and generalization to determine which information makes it through to become our experience of reality, also known as our map. To put this process in perspective, your map is less than .01% of reality or your potentiality. Mind blown just a bit right now?
Well, imagine then if you could change just one of these filters. Let’s say your belief filter. Imagine then what information is allowed to pass through the filtering process. One of my coaches calls this the Door Bitch. And that visual, helped me to see how much control I actually have over my worldview. Change a filter and you change your map. Change your map and your life.
So if you could change just one of the ways your filters, filter what would that do for you? Would it change how you live? Would it change how you viewed the world? Your world? Would it change the way you protect yourself or maybe free yourself?
If we can make these micro (and sometimes macro) shifts at the unconscious level, then how we live at the conscious level is full of endless possibilities.
Liberate your filter and you liberate your story.